What is New Media

Many people will think of the same answer when asked this question. The reason for this is simply because they don’t know the history behind the ‘media’. When digging deeper into what media is and how it came to be, most people will find that not only is it complex but also fascinating how it all came together. To understand a little bit more about how media became ‘new media’ we must first understand what ‘old media’ was. In the eighteen century there were multiple inventions that changed the way people looked at different types of media. As stated on the book “The language of the new Media“– by Manovich Lev: “Computing and Media Technologies. Both begin in the 1830s…in a parallel movement…modern media technologies allow the storage of images, image sequences, sounds, and text using different materials…photographic plates, film stocks, gramophone records, etc. “. On this book it is explained how media on the eighteen century was revolutionized by the different types of technologies that were introduced into that time period. Fast forward a few years and we find new technologies that were able to combine these types of media that were stored separately into one piece of new media. On the book “The language of the new Media“– by Manovich Lev it is stated that: ”Media and Computer-Daguerre’s daguerreotype and Babbage’s analytical engine, the Lumiere Cinematographie and Hollerith’s tabulator-merge into one. All existing media are translated into numerical data accessible for the computer. The result: graphics, moving images, sounds, shapes, spaces, and texts become computable…In short media become new media”. On this statement we find that all the existing types of media over the years became computable giving people the ability to record and store these different types of media conveniently in one place.

What are the principles of media?

There are five principles of new media:

1. The Numerical Representation–When new media is created on a computer we have learned that these data is coming out as numerical data. This theory is assuming that the data is continuous and therefore the digitization process is the easiest way to bring any type of media into a computer. As an example we have a digital image where the images pixels are grids. Each of these boxes are assigned a number which could mean the color that particular box. When all these numbers are put together they should be able to transform all these numerical data into the original image that we started with.
2. Modularity–This concepts introduces the idea of every object’s independence. The example explained on the Book “The language of the new Media“– by Manovich Lev states that: Even though a film is a one large file, the images from the frames of that film do not loose there independence. This means that images, sounds that are in this large file (Film) are still independently saved and can be used separately even though they are part of this one large file.Another example that the book talks about is an image on a word document: the document is one but inside it there are independent items such as the image and maybe even some text
3. Automation–This idea of automation simply means the ability to store a blueprint of an already finished product. For example in 3d software there are shapes that are frequently used (cube, sphere) and for that reason those shapes are already preloaded in that software for anyone to just click once and have the desired shape. Another example that is interesting is the algorithms used in software like Photoshop, which basically record actions like reducing noise on an image or adjust contrast and brightness and make it available for the public with just one click away
4. Variability–This concepts explains how one item can be multiplied/copied and the different versions of it will contain identical information as its original version. As a simple example we have an image that travels from computer to computer. Many people will make use of the same image multiple times but the end result could be infinite. Another interesting example is updates whether its on multimedia or just on a regular website. The media can be copied multiple times and different people may use it in different ways, coming up with different versions from its original.
5. Transcoding –Mentioned on the book: “The language of the new Media“– by Manovich Lev “New Media can be thought of as consisting distinct layers – ‘The cultural layers’ and the ‘computer layer’. Basically what this means is simply that we have two types of ‘dimension’ within the same ITEM. For an example we go back to that same image where we can see an image that represents something in the human eyes/the eyes of the public. On the other hand we have the same image but on a different ‘dimension that shows how that image was computerized. On the computer side of things we can see that same file’s specifications such as file type, type of compression, size date created etc. This information it’s still that same image but it is just not understandable to the ordinary public (except for people who know something about computers)